4/12/2017

One of the longest-developing adult-themed thrillers of the last few years is basically dead tonight. Triple Frontier, the border zone film from J.C. Chandor that once had Kathryn Bigelow attached has lost both of its stars, Tom Hardy and Channing Tatum. Okay, that's survivable. But they also lost its studio as Paramount Pictures has dropped out. Not survivable.

Deadline has the news, and basically it sounds like this movie is a victim of Paramount's dire financial shape. The studio has been getting kicked around for a couple of years now with a series of high-profile and very expensive flops and disappointments. Obviously Ghost in the Shell is the most recent with a loss of $60M or more being projected, but there's also Ben-Hur, Monster Trucks (remember they tried to get in front of that one), Star Trek Beyond, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, Jack Reacher 2, and Zoolander 2. Oof. This is also why you hear so little about some of the big projects that should have been no-brainers, like World War Z 2 which can't get off the ground even with Brad Pitt and David Fincher attached. And Martin Scorsese's The Irishman, which Paramount owns the rights to but is being distributed by Netflix. Basically, Paramount is on lock down.

Apparently there were also creative problems that drove the nail a bit further into the film's coffin.

I had heard earlier that Chandor turned in a rewrite that Tatum and Hardy didn’t love, and they were teetering. Sources said that for Paramount, this project was being done on a tight schedule and for a price, and that once creative differences imperiled that goal and requests were made for more extensive changes — I’ve heard those requests came from Hardy
It's possible Triple Frontier ends up elsewhere, but at this point it seems dead in the water and that's a shame. There aren't a ton of adult-skewing movies like this around anymore, but they are also incredibly tough to market. Maybe someone like Netflix or Amazon can swoop in to the rescue.